What’s in a Word?

nature

rock

צור · חלמיש · סלע · אבן

Bottom line

The scale runs even (any stone), sela (hard crag), tzur (harder still), chalamish (hardest of all). Render tzur flintrock or hard rock, and where it is a divine epithet, Rock; Rambam adds a second sense, the quarry a stone is hewn from, hence source. Chalamish is conventionally flint, but Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim makes it a subdivision of tzur, the very hardest stones. The distinguishing fact: Malbim, a sela is porous and can hold water, a tzur cannot, which is why Rabbi Chaim Vital calls a tzur the stone that gives fire. The trap: rendering both sela and tzur "rock" flattens Devarim 32, where the two are theologically distinct.

Distinctions

tzur (צור)

Both Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim and Malbim: a tzur is harder than a sela. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim ties the word to tzarur, a bundle, since its parts are packed so tightly that the stone comes out hard; he identifies one variety as chert. Rabbi Yosef Kimchi (Sefer HaGalui), father of Radak: tzur/tzor means specifically a sharp stone. That fits its two circumcision contexts: Tzipporah takes a tzur to be mohel for her son (Shemos 4:25), and Yehoshua's mass milah is done with charvos tzurim, stone knives (Yehoshua 5:2-3).

Malbim: a sela is the porous kind that can hold water inside; a tzur is so hard that water is impossible in it. Rabbi Chaim Vital: a tzur, or tzur hachalamish, is the stone that produces fire, which fits exactly, since a stone holding water could not. Rabbi Yisrael Menachem Mendel Sacharov notes that hatzur has the gematria of aish.

Then the extended senses. Rambam (Moreh Nevuchim 1:16): tzur means a mountain and a kind of hard rock, and also the quarry from which stones are cut, which is how Yeshayahu can say "look to the tzur from which you were hewn... look to Avraham your father and to Sarah who bore you" (Yeshayahu 51:1-2); from there the word was borrowed for any root or source, and Hashem is called Tzur as the Source of everything (Devarim 32:4, 32:18, 32:30; Shmuel I 2:2; Yeshayahu 26:4). Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum, building on Rambam: the tzur is the source of stones, while even and sela are the stones themselves. Rabbi Chaim Friedlander: a tzur is the bedrock a building's foundation rests on, and Hashem is called Tzur because He is the surest foundation, relied on continuously the way a building leans on its footing at every moment. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: Hashem is Tzur because as the Prime Force He ties (tzorer) all of creation into one, everything depending on Him to exist; and Berachos 10a reads Chanah's "there is no tzur like our God" (Shmuel I 2:2) as tzayir, Fashioner.

chalamish (חלמיש)

Usually rendered flint. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim disagrees: chalamish is not one mineral but a subdivision of tzur, the hardest stones in that class, reaching as far as the hardest natural mineral there is. He links the word, lightly, to chelmon, an egg yolk, both being round and smooth. It appears bound to tzur in construct, tzur hachalamish and chalamish tzur (Devarim 8:15, 32:13), and standing alone (Tehillim 114:8, Iyov 28:9, Yeshayahu 50:7). In Modern Hebrew tzur is the word that means flint, which inverts the older usage.

Rendering guidance

  • Fix one English word per Hebrew word and hold it: even "stone," sela "crag," tzur "flintrock" (or "hard rock"), chalamish "flint" or "hardest rock." Devarim 32 alone has tzur five times and chalamish once; a translation that says "rock" throughout makes the shirah unreadable as an argument.
  • צור as a name of Hashem: capital Rock, as in "the Rock, His work is perfect" (Devarim 32:4). Do not lowercase it and do not substitute "Stronghold" or "Refuge," which belong to other words; Rambam's source-sense is what licenses the epithet, and "Rock" carries it.
  • צור הַחלמיש (Devarim 8:15, 32:13): "the flinty rock" or "rock of flint." Do not collapse the construct into one word; the pair is a superlative, the hardest sort of the hard sort.
  • Trap: tzur and sela in the same passage. Follow Malbim and let the English mark it: the sela is the one Moshe was told to speak to for water (Bamidbar 20:8), because a sela can hold water; a tzur is the fire-stone. If both are "rock," the pesukim look like repetition.
  • Where tzur means a quarry or lineage (Yeshayahu 51:1), render "source" or "the rock you were hewn from," and gloss it once; a bare "rock" hides Rambam's reading and with it the parallel to Avraham and Sarah in the next pasuk.
  • צורים as knives (Yehoshua 5:2-3): "flint knives" or "stone knives," not "swords of rock," even though the Hebrew says charvos.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Like a Rock (Part 2)," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 16 Kislev 5779 (2018-11-24); raw text at sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8000-like-a-rock-part-2.md. Primary loci cited: Shemos 4:25 and 39:11; Yehoshua 5:2-3; Devarim 8:15, 32:4, 32:13, 32:18, 32:30; Tehillim 114:8; Iyov 28:9; Yeshayahu 26:4, 50:7, 51:1-2; Shmuel I 2:2 with Berachos 10a; Rambam, Moreh Nevuchim 1:16; Rabbi Yosef Kimchi, Sefer HaGalui.

This is part 2 of a two-part series; part 1 (wiaw:7990) carries even and sela and is covered in rock-even-sela.md. The article's references to Mohs' scale of mineral hardness are omitted here; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim's ordering of the four words by hardness is kept as he gives it.